Halloween

by John Passarella

  She saw a woman in advanced middle age with neatly brushed shoulder-length blond hair, wearing wireframe glasses, dressed practically in a long-sleeved blue denim shirt, the cuffs rolled up to reveal an analog wristwatch with a brown leather band, green denim trousers and ankle-high boots. True, she had isolated herself, living alone in the backwoods farmhouse, fortified for extra security, but she displayed no apparent signs of raving lunacy or gibbering paranoia. So far she’d come across as an intensely private but rational woman. Dana noted one potential red flag—the sheathed hunting knife strapped to Laurie’s belt. Not as disconcerting as a holstered handgun or if she’d greeted them at the door with a loaded shotgun, but something to consider nonetheless.

  Laurie directed them to a rustic living room, mostly wood-paneled with one red-brick wall behind a raised brick landing, which held a wood-burning stove with a stack of firewood beside it. Dana wondered if the house had originally featured a fireplace that Laurie sealed for security, replacing it with the stove. The left side of the brick wall featured a built-in bookcase, while the right had a high shelf where she’d placed a flat-screen TV next to a VCR and a small stack of VHS tapes.

  A sofa and loveseat in a matching floral print formed an L around a glass-and-bamboo coffee table. While Aaron sat on the sofa, Dana took the near corner of the loveseat. Ignoring the rust-colored wing chair beside the loveseat, Laurie sat opposite them in relative discomfort on a wooden chair she brought in from the kitchen. She set a glass of strawberry milk on the coffee table that separated them. Pointedly, she hadn’t offered them anything to drink. For the promise of three thousand dollars, she’d invited them inside her home—fortified bunker might be a more accurate description—but she had no intention of entertaining them. Dana had no doubt they were on a short leash.

  Dana set her recorder on the table, mic upright to catch both sides of the conversation. “You’ve lived here since 1985?”

  Laurie thought for a moment, nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  Dana looked around the room, seeking and finding no evidence of other occupants. She was far from neighbors and had infrequent, if any, visitors. “Do you feel isolated?”

  “I don’t.”

  Such a simple, declarative statement. Dana couldn’t tell if she believed it or not.

  But Aaron wasn’t buying it. “You tell yourself that you’re protecting your family. That if he comes for you again, you’ve distanced yourself from everyone you love.”

  Dana nodded, seeing the logic in it.

  “Aaron and I have made several award-winning public radio exposés. Our last project shed new light on a murder case from twenty years ago. We like to re-examine incidents with an unbiased lens. When people are willing to look at things in a different light over time, new truths can sometimes emerge. I believe there is a lot to learn from the horrors you experienced.”

  Frowning, Laurie said, “There’s nothing to reexamine. Nothing to learn from something that happened forty years ago.”

  “So,” Aaron said, “is he real?”

  “Who?”

  “The Boogeyman,” Aaron said. “I’ve read you quoted—”

  “You don’t believe in the Boogeyman?”

  Dana looked for the hint of a smile, a telltale sign that Laurie was joking, as unlikely as that seemed. But she’d posed the question with complete seriousness.

  “I believe in Michael Myers,” Aaron said reasonably, “a deranged serial killer. But the Boogeyman? No.”

  Laurie took a sip of her milk before replying. “Well, you should.”

  “We have archival recordings of Dr Loomis after that horrific night,” Aaron soldiered on without conceding the point. “His intellect was overcome with abstract and apocalyptic observations.”

  “He just wanted Michael dead,” Laurie said, “and no one would listen.”

  Maybe Loomis’s irrational attitude had rubbed off on Laurie. Both were unwilling to see Michael Myers as a seriously flawed human, instead elevating him to some sort of supernatural entity, a physical embodiment of evil.

  “Michael Myers is a human being that killed his sister when he was six years old,” Dana said, sticking to the facts rather than succumbing to metaphysical speculation. “And then he came after you… We want to know why. We want a glimpse inside his mind. That’s why your story is important.”

  “My story?”

  “Two failed marriages. A rocky relationship with your daughter and granddaughter.” Aaron looked askance. “Among other issues…”

  “Aaron,” Dana said, a light note of caution in her voice.

  Aaron nodded to several empty prescription pill bottles scattered on the table.

  Laurie sat up straighter, a defensive posture. “It’s interesting that Michael killed five people and he’s a human being. I’m twice divorced and I’m a basket case.”

  “My apologies,” Aaron said hesitantly.

  “I have nothing but vague, very flawed memories of that night,” Laurie said. “The insight you’re looking for does not exist.”

  Aaron nodded, silently acknowledging defeat, Dana imagined. His line of inquiry seemed to be a dead end.

  “They’re transferring him,” Aaron said.

  “I know,” Laurie said. “Tomorrow.”

  “He’ll be locked away till the end of his days,” Dana said, as if it were her promise to make, hoping perhaps that Laurie would take solace in the finality of his fate and maybe, just maybe, change her mind.

  “That’s the idea,” Laurie said, almost too casually, with an undertone of skepticism. Dana thought she understood the source of Laurie’s doubt. Because she had blown her belief in a Boogeyman out of rational proportion, she was unwilling to accept a simple, permanent solution to her forty-year nightmare.

  “Do you surrender any efforts of rehabilitation?” Aaron asked her.

  Laurie scoffed. “Because everyone knows forty years is when you typically turn the corner.”

  Sensing another conversational dead end, Dana switched gears. “Let’s talk about when the state came to take your daughter away,” she said, broaching a sensitive subject and hoping for a more emotional response. “She was twelve years old. They said you were an unfit mother. How long until you regained custody?”

  “I didn’t,” Laurie said flatly. “But I bet you knew that.”

  Laurie stood, wandered toward the front door, shifting her gaze and attention to the stand of trees outside. Getting lost in the wilderness that encroached on her property. Dana wondered if she was thinking how her life and her daughter’s life might have been different if she had chosen a different path after the tragedy. The costs of her lifelong fear…

  “Laurie,” Aaron said, urgency creeping into his tone, sensing as Dana did that they were losing her. “We want you to sit down with him. Sit with Michael—in a safe environment. He won’t speak to anybody… but he might speak to you. Finally, you can get the chance to say what you’ve always wanted to say to him.” Aaron paused, unsure if his words swayed her. “Come with us. Let us help you… free yourself.”

  Laurie tore her gaze away from the woods and stared down at them, a hard glint in her eyes. “Time’s up. I’ll accept my payment.”

  With a nearly inaudible sigh, Aaron stood, brushed off his jeans and pulled the orange envelope out of his back pocket. Silently, he walked it over to her and waited as she counted.

  Stuffing the envelope in her own jeans pocket, she turned her attention to the door, releasing each lock in turn before removing the heavy metal crossbar. Dana had the weird sense of depressurization. Being locked in Laurie’s makeshift bunker gave the air a sense of weight, as if each breath required effort. The ticking of a nearby wall clock seemed amplified, giving a strange gravity to the passage of time.

  Dana recalled—perhaps in an oversimplified way—how astrophysicists claimed time slowed down near the event horizon of a black hole, that anything approaching that point of no return eventually stopped moving, frozen forevermore. Dana had th
e sense that time spent within these fortified walls would play tricks on the mind, a psychological quirk infecting any occupant with a severe case of emotional inertia. She believed the past had a death grip on Laurie Strode, and that it had festered in her home. Aaron had offered to help Laurie “free herself.” But the older woman refused to acknowledge her own psychological captivity, to recognize she had become her own jailer.

  Laurie pulled the door open wide and stood back. “With your journalistic insights, I’m sure you’ll be able to find your way out.”

  As they walked away from the house, Dana glanced back to see Laurie standing in the doorway. In the moment before Laurie closed the door, Dana thought she glimpsed a look of honest contemplation in the woman’s eyes.

  Maybe there’s hope for her yet…

  6

  In the morning rush before start of classes, a river of students flowed through the hallways of Haddonfield High School. Those accessing their lockers became the rocks and shoals that redirected the stream. Dozens of conversations overlapped in a discordant buzz punctuated by the irregular slamming of narrow metal locker doors.

  When the warning bell rang, Allyson clutched her armful of notebooks and books and closed her locker with her free hand.

  As she turned, a husky voice startled her. “Gotcha!”

  A split second later, she registered Cameron’s face and realized he’d intended to spook her by sneaking up on her and disguising his voice. But not before she dropped her books. “Cameron,” she said, annoyed. “Jesus.”

  He crouched beside her to help pick up her scattered texts.

  “I got you, babe,” he said. “Do you have everything for your costume tomorrow night?” He nodded toward one of the many hand-painted banners taped to the walls to promote the Halloween dance. “Bonnie and Clyde must roll as one.”

  Allyson settled the stack of books in her arms, placing her worn paperback copy of The Great Gatsby on top for her first class, and shook her head. “I’m just thinking about tonight.”

  “Tonight?” Cameron said. “Come on. I thought you were joking when you said your parents were old-fashioned.”

  “Be nice,” she said. She thought it endearing that Cameron was so concerned about meeting her parents for the first time. In everything else, he acted laid-back and casual, unfazed by life’s daily hassles, occasionally running his fingers through his wavy, shoulder-length brown hair. But this one thing triggered a social allergy in him. “It’ll be nice. I just want you to meet them. I’m more old-fashioned than they are. Just don’t make them like you too much. I like to keep them on edge.”

  She smiled and leaned forward to give him a gentle kiss on the lips.

  “Slow down, Smoochy,” a voice exclaimed right beside them. “Save me a slice.”

  Allyson and Cameron broke the kiss.

  This voice, undisguised and all too familiar, belonged to Oscar. A fast talker who always tried to lay on the charm to cover an underlying… creepiness. Something about him made Allyson uncomfortable. He was always too familiar and he had no respect for personal boundaries.

  As if on cue, Oscar leaned in and kissed each of them on the cheek.

  “Dude,” Cameron said, rubbing his cheek with the back of his hand, “you got chapped-lip crusties all over me, man.”

  “Naw,” Oscar said, dismissing Cameron’s comment, even though his lips actually were approaching heinous territory. “Play it cool. I got you, babe. You have everything for your costume tomorrow night? Tango and Cash must roll as one.”

  Jeez, Allyson thought, annoyed, how long was he eavesdropping on our conversation? She had some serious doubts about Cameron’s friend. Perv, peeper, stalker? she wondered. Where exactly is he on the slimeball scale?

  Oscar produced a chapstick from his pocket and gave his lips a practiced once-over, top and bottom, left to right.

  “Um…” Cameron said, stalling.

  Oscar glanced quickly between Allyson and Cameron. “What?” he asked. “You said we were going as Sly and Kurt, bro. You said we were doing this Halloween dance thing. What’s up? You’re ditching me now?”

  Add clingy to the list, Allyson thought. She patted Cameron on the shoulder. “I’ll see you lovebirds later.” Then, pointedly, at Cameron, “And I better see you tonight.”

  She walked away from the guys, shaking her head with a smile. She couldn’t figure out what Cameron saw in him.

  Across the hall—foot traffic down to a trickle of students destined to be late for first class—a girl named Kim something or other gave Allyson a curious look. She’d been watching the whole Oscar drama with a little too much interest. Allyson wondered what her deal was, but she couldn’t stick around or she’d be late for English.

  Turning the corner, she ducked into Miss Johnston’s class, slipping into a seat in the back row as the class bell sounded. As Allyson hurriedly flipped open her notebook to the last day’s notes Emma Wagner, in the seat to her left, flashed a friendly smile.

  “Okay, class, final day of discussion on The Great Gatsby,” Miss Johnston said. Noting the overall glum mood of the first-period class, she added, “I hope you’re all prepared for a scintillating discussion and ready to dazzle me with the insights of your vast intellects.”

  “Need more coffee for that,” someone to the far left said, possibly Ben Gangemi, since several students glanced his way and chuckled.

  “Unfortunately,” Miss Johnston said, “I’m not running a convenience store up here, so we’ll have to make do with current caffeine levels.” She leaned against the front of her desk, a copy of The Great Gatsby clutched in her right hand, and quoted from the book. “‘So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’” She looked around the room. “What is Nick telling us with that closing line?”

  Thinking of her grandmother, the line had special resonance for Allyson. Lost in her thoughts, she belatedly realized Emma had raised her hand to answer the question.

  “It means that the past has a hold on us.”

  Miss Johnston nodded. “So, is there no hope for us?” she asked as a follow-up. “Can we ever escape the past?”

  When Emma didn’t respond right away, Miss Johnston’s gaze shifted to Emma’s right. “Allyson? Any thoughts?”

  Allyson looked up, startled. She thought of the strained relationship between her grandmother and mother. One unwilling—or unable—to forget the past, the other determined to move on, yet both sacrificing so much to remain steadfast in their conflicting points of view.

  “It’s about the struggle,” she said.

  7

  Inside the Haddonfield Harmony Community Center, Karen sat at the head of a table in her therapy room, which, due to the gathering of pre-teen children, had the appearance of a classroom. But these kids were at-risk youths, surviving in less than desirable home situations or shuffling between foster homes, some of them victims of abuse. In almost all cases they were dealing with emotional issues that would be troubling for adults, let alone children their age. Some exhibited signs of PTSD.

  For the past few sessions, Karen had the children work on homemade puppets. The older kids made boy or girl puppets, now and then adding goofy touches, such as feathers for hair or googly eyes. The younger kids tended to give their puppets costumes, so Karen spotted a pirate, an astronaut, a scarecrow, and a few superheroes, along with a princess with absurdly long hair, and a couple of Halloween-themed ghosts and witches.

  The children held their puppets upright on the table, while they bowed their heads, almost as if they were napping or might fall asleep while their puppets discussed their feelings. In this way they were free to project their own fear and emotions through the puppets. But the puppets might or might not be projections of themselves. Sometimes the puppets represented the person who disturbed them, frightened them. One boy, who had made a clown puppet, had since abandoned it and was preoccupied with untangling a yo-yo.

  “Who wants to go first?” Karen asked.

&
nbsp; “I’m King Bradley,” Tyler said, tilting his royal puppet left and right, “and I get angry at the rain.”

  Karen recalled from Tyler’s file that his stepfather’s name was Bradley.

  “When my brother comes home from work,” Cody said, jumping in, “I get scared, cuz he brings the guys to fight and throw people through walls.”

  Mia placed her girl puppet flat on the table, pressing the rainbow-colored dress with the palm of her left hand, and raised her head. She looked at Karen with heartbreaking vulnerability in her eyes. “If you run away from home then you have no one to hurt you.”

  Karen couldn’t decide if the little girl spoke to her own situation, or if she was offering advice to Cody. But she couldn’t endorse pre-teens running away from home. There were better paths to safety. “We need to look at those who love us for protection and comfort,” Karen said. “But listen to your feelings. You have all lived through very difficult situations, and we are confronted with bad people from time to time.”

  Mia gave her a slight nod. A few of the other children murmured agreement with her statement. Some were still closed off from expression. But all listened intently.

  “But by using our communications, right? By using our voices and telling grown-ups that we trust what is happening in our minds, we can help ourselves overcome our problems and honor our feelings.”

  “Like you?” Mia asked.

  Karen smiled. “That’s right,” she said. “Like me. But I’m not the only one you can trust.”

  Mia nodded, picked up her puppet and lowered her head to the table, ready to begin.

  * * *

  Almost an hour later, Laurie drove her black Nissan pickup truck through a rundown neighborhood, a place where she wouldn’t want to walk alone at night, not without a whistle and a can of mace, not to mention one of her guns. All the houses she passed were in various states of disrepair; the worst had plywood—and in one case a sheet of cardboard—in place over broken windows. Graffiti tags had sprung up on walls, traffic lights, and some of the plywood panels.